


Black Monday

by apiphile, jar



Series: thursdayverse [4]
Category: Cobra Starship, Dresden Dolls, Fall Out Boy, Gym Class Heroes, My Chemical Romance, The Used
Genre: Character Death, Drug Use, Fights, Gen, M/M, Mob AU, Violence, body disposal, co-writing, misogynist humour, pack mentality, platonic soul-mates, protagonist is a psychopath, protagonist is fucking scary, undercover policeman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:55:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jar/pseuds/jar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thursdayverse Part 4: the series is co-authored, this part was written by me. Quinn Allman makes a few discoveries about the infrastructure of the Way Empire.</p><p>This fic will not make sense unless you have read: Thursday kids like to cause, Died on a Wednesday, and Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting (So Is Friday).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Monday

**Author's Note:**

> Quinn POV. Anyone looking for my opinions in his thoughts has missed the point of fiction somewhat. Also, ENORMOUS thanks go to channonyarrow for periodically translating my gibberish into English, and reminding me that people cannot in fact see the inside of my head or indeed understand when I leave out three whole sentences. BEST. BETA. EVER.

In the end, what better epitaph can you give a guy than "he was true to his friends"? That's all Quinn Allman really wants. Not that he necessarily has any real plans for dying just yet. But.

Perimeter patrol sucks. The siege state that no one is admitting _exists_, that sucks. Gerard fucking Way fucking sucks. About the only thing in this whole black hole of suckitude that doesn't suck is clean-up, and that's why Quinn volunteered for it … before he could be "asked" to anyway.

The parking lot beneath the hotel is the skeleton of the building, the secret of all verticality; concrete pillars and distant walls, the echoes as harsh and real as slaps, his breath visible in the air despite the clammy heat upstairs. The parking lot is a box studded with greenish lights shining on vans and very expensive classic cars. Quinn's not in the least bit petty, at all, but he's keyed all of those fucking wrecks since he got here.

The enamel bathtub with clawed feet is out of place, but it seems much less so here in this pretentious shitpile hotel than it would have been in the last place he did this, the shitty motel on the verges of the town.

"How many fucking cans do you even _need_, man?"

And that's the other thing. Sending someone he _doesn't fucking know_ down to "help" him, someone he doesn't fucking know and automatically distrusts – that just stinks of "keeping an eye on you". And he doesn't appreciate that at all, least of all from Gerard fucking Way.

"You can always fuck off and let me get on with this," Quinn suggests, motioning with one half-bandaged hand for the prick – what was his n—ah, yes. _Travis_. Motioning for Travis to put the third heavy, yellow-and-black printed can down by the bath. He is too tall and he smiles too much. Quinn thinks about the palm diamond and knuckle spikes in his shorts pockets almost wistfully. Maybe he'll get a chance later. This is back-stab central.

"And miss the show?" Travis puts the can down gingerly and stands back, wiping his palms on his thighs like he can scrape away the contagion.

The body in the bath may or may not be dead; what matters is that the red and broken corpse or near-corpse (Quinn thinks he spots a gentle, bubbling breath still in the lungs, fighting its way out, but that might just be gas) that is huddled like a hobo in the bath is no longer necessary. They're done with him.

"They" of course means the fucking Way _Empire_ and its hangers-on and lackeys. Quinn was done with this fuckup long before he broke into the hotel, really fucking _done_ with him, and he wishes he'd just killed the prick _then_, before any of this shit. The only reason he's not still spitting on the ravaged and torn body of Branden fucking dog traitor Steineckert is he's got no spit left now.

Quinn reties the grubby bandage around his forearm with his teeth. It's too cold down here, but as long as this Travis prick doesn't get any closer he won't see the goosebumps and won't think he's fucking weak, and Quinn won't have to kick him in the balls and bite off his nose.

"It's not a show," Quinn says shortly, hefting the first of the three cans and pulling the surgical mask over his nose awkwardly with his injured hand. The glove on his other hand is clumsy and huge, makes him feel like he's working with a stump on that side, but letting his skin near the contents would be hugely fucking stupid. And Quinn's a lot of things – vicious, bitter, savage to the point of psychosis, and prematurely bald – but he's not fucking stupid.

He tips the can up over the bath and Travis steps away hurriedly, avoiding any of the splashes. Smart of him.

"Science demonstration then," says Travis, with an unreadable expression.

Quinn's biceps get fat as he struggles with the second can, and with hiding that struggle. He doesn't need any fucking help and he doesn't want that skinny pisspot asshole offering it; the liquid already in the bath sloshes menacingly but harmlessly for now, and Quinn can see ripples as he sets the rim of the second can on the edge of the bath with difficulty.

Steineckert is definitely still _alive_, if perhaps referring to him as _conscious_ is a bit of a stretch. Well, well. Quinn wants him conscious. Quinn wants him with his eyes fucking open when the final can is poured. Eyes open and brain functioning enough to know what he's seeing. He tips the second can.

Travis steps a little further back.

Pulling the goggles down off his forehead and over his eyes, Quinn knows he looks alien and terrifying; he caught sight of himself in the motel's bathroom mirror last time and a cold dread had twisted his guts before he recognised his own t-shirt attached to the monster. He balances the third can, makes sure his surgical mask is on straight and snug, and jerks it upside-down in one movement: _slosh slosh splosh_.

The fumes are vile. They smell like rot would if rot burnt instead of progressing wetly, and Quinn's eyes tear up in spite of the goggles, his skin twitching to get away from the potent combination of chemicals, but he stays. Travis gets further back, level with one of the vans, covering his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his stupid jacket, but in the sudden heat of exothermic destruction – masterminded by Bert, performed by Quinn – he just leans over the tub to watch the flesh sizzle off Steineckert's bones. To watch his bones blacken to dust, then to paste, in the hissing liquid.

Soon all that's left will be foul-smelling sludge and a couple of piercing bars. Quinn watches from behind thick glass lenses, as close as he can get without it eating into him or the fumes knocking him out, and smiles behind his mask. It's not a smile anyone would revel in seeing.

The only thing keeping him from hawking a final, disdainful gob of phlegm into the rapidly vanishing remains of the fucking asshole traitor is the dryness of his throat; he'd have to risk removing the mask for that parting shot. There isn't enough spit in the world, and his piss is too precious to waste on _him_.

"Remind me never to get on your bad side," Travis remarks as Quinn passes him, leaving the bath for the lanky fucknut to hose out himself.

"Who says you're on my good side?" Quinn asks, pulling his mask down to reveal what is still not by anyone's measure a smile. He punches the elevator button with his knuckle, his scabbed and sore knuckle, leaving Travis to deal with his mess.

It seems only fair. After all, Bert's boys have been cleaning up after everyone _else_ since they got here, like always. Quinn doesn't get the chance to kick _down_ all that often, he's making the fucking most of it.

In most of the hotel it could be any hour; natural light doesn't penetrate. Quinn can't help the sneering thought that it's probably some asshole affectation on the part of the Way clan, that their precious milky skin is too _delicate_ to cope with sunlight. Fits with their fucking retarded vampire horror movie chic.

His watch says it's just past six, and the mirrored elevator walls say it's time he maybe changed out of the clothes he's been wearing for over a week, but it's not until he steps out into the lobby and checks the angle of the light from the doors that he knows it's six in the _morning_. This is all fucked up.

Quinn pulls the goggles off his head and lets them dangle numbly from his gloved hand, slides the mask around his neck and breathes deeply of uncontaminated air. It's six. His bros will be coming off second-shift outer perimeter patrol, presumably from an uneventful night, and crashing through the rooms they've staked out for themselves. Close to the fire exit, not to guard against opportunists breaking in so much as to make sure there's a quick way out if it all goes to shit and they're forced to run.

Of everyone here, Quinn thinks, going to spit on the wallpaper and finding again that his mouth's too dry, they're the ones who truly know about shit hitting the fan. They know rotten luck, and that, _that,_ is why they're here.

Saporta and Ryland – unlike everyone else, Quinn's got a good memory for names, a needle-sharp grudge-flavoured mind when it comes to knowing who fucked them and when, or who _might_ yet – pass him from the other direction, coming off inner most likely. Unless the Ways dragged them from their gang for bullshit –

The thought is cut off when Saporta and Ryland nod recognition to him. Saporta's snigger at his dishevelled appearance and the goggles-marks still pink on his face is so perfectly clear in his creepy, staring eyes that there's no need for him to do it out loud. That part's just an ugly fucking bonus.

The "fuck you" curls upwards behind Quinn's teeth (it's never more than an inch from spilling out of the back of his throat), aching to get out. His bandaged hand is already snaking to the pocket with his palm diamond, his mind flushed with the image of it puncturing perfectly a long skinny stupid throat, when he realises that he's going to have to let it pass. He can't draw attention to them, to his bros.

They snicker and slip away into the low artificial light, cool and straight-backed, and he knows that gait conceals poise and knives and poison knives, and that throwing anything after them will be a waste of time, cause more problems than it solves; his gut churns with Quinn-Vitriol all the same.

He hates them on principle, these carefully-groomed sniggering dicks with their clean clothes and prettyboy faces; Quinn was sharpened against a different grindstone, and he has no time for anyone who thinks they can hide their old softnesses under a constructed carapace.

The walk back to the rooms he shares is shorter after that.

* * *

A comforting smell hangs over the fire escape end of their corridor, something that overpowers the stench of strange substances that've ridden up on his clothes and hair. It's equal parts pot smoke and stale sweat, the precise chemical collaboration between four disparate bodies and canniboids creating the only perfume Quinn's ever really cared for. He dumps the glove and goggles on the carpet and shoulders through the unlocked door with his injured hand raised in an ironic salute.

"Good morning, Doctor Allman, what's the prognosis?" Dan asks, nodding at the surgical mask around his throat. Dan's sprawled over the double bed, propped on up his elbows with his feet dangling over the side in what must be an uncomfortable position, though he doesn't show it. Jepha's sitting on his _stomach_ like a garden gnome, rolling a joint, hindered occasionally by Bert – back to the head board, book in hands – kicking him in the back with the very point of his toe.

"Mr. Steineckert has a bad case of being fucking dead, Mr. Whitesides," Quinn says gravely. "Funeral arrangements have been made."

Dan nods gravely. "Alas, poor Steineckert."

"Be glad you didn't know him," Bert says, closing his book (_The Lost Artefacts of Truth_) and dropping it on the pillow beside him, nearly knocking over the ash tray that already rested there. He seems relaxed, content, and Quinn exhales smooth and slow. He likes relaxed Bert; relaxed, slightly stoned Bert is the Bert truly genius ideas flock to like flies to a split garbage bag. Which isn't saying he doesn't _also_ think well under pressure – Quinn's still a little in awe of his mind. Just a little.

Jepha lights up and says nothing. One of Dan's huge, rough hands is cupped around his ankle and there's blood on his cheek, a cut on his cheek. Quinn knows not to get mad about that, they've probably just been fucking about, not under attack, and with that thought it's his libido and not his ire that's stoked.

"GeeWay called dates for the next bout," Bert says presently, taking the joint from Jepha's unresisting, inky fingers.

Quinn hates that nickname, and he hates the small spark on Bert's face when he says it, and he hates what those two things mean. He's Bert's _bodyguard_, after all; that means guarding his body, including his heart. If Way so much as sneezes on Bert's feelings Quinn is going to spray-paint the hotel with his fucking blood.

"And names," Bert adds, inhaling.

"Who's fighting?" Quinn slides the surgical mask up onto his head so's he looks like a Klingon. Bert giggles his acknowledgement of how ridiculous he looks, and offer him the joint.

"Not us."

Quinn's half-mad and half-relieved. Mad because even though he's not a cages guy or a pit guy, he's wound tighter than a bike chain around a fist and he wants to fuck someone up; might as well do it legit, do it encouraged, do it for _money_. But relieved, 'cause they'd pick Jepha again – realistically – and Jepha gets so _distracted_ during his bouts that he forgets to tap out.

That keeps on happening and there'll be a day when no amount of pitside, cageside vets can patch him up, and someone who isn't one of his bros, someone who is one of these fakes, these vipers, will put him under. Quinn won't stand for that.

He takes the joint.

"Who _is_?"

Bert shrugs, his eyes wandering all over Jepha's back before they settle on Quinn's face. "Why'd you want to know, Dr Allman, are you going to put money on it?"

Dan interrupts before Quinn can answer. "Yeah, he's putting one dollar on 'whoever wins, we lose'."

The smoke fires up Quinn's salivary glands again, soothes the acrid ridges the fumes managed to leave in his throat even with the protection of the mask. He gathers up a mouthful of spit and leans over the rumpled bed.

"The pyrrhic victory bet," Bert says sagely, snatching the joint back from Quinn's loose hand, his whole and unbandaged hand.

Quinn spits in his hair.

Bert takes a lung of smoke, passes the joint back to Jepha cherry-first (and Jepha takes it by the cherry, burning himself but not extinguishing it) and seizes Quinn by the injured wrist.

"_Ow_," Quinn points out, more for effect than because it hurts.

His only response is to stick Quinn's forefinger in his mouth and drool around it, and Quinn's laughing around the sudden stab of pain. That's why he loves these guys and these guys only; he didn't exactly have a childhood, and from what he knows of Bert he didn't either. But with these guys – and only these guys – there are moments among the savagery, whole days when time has that golden gleam on it and the air no longer cuts him, and he doesn't want to smash the faces of the greedy spoilt world so much.

"Patrick's fighting," Jepha says, a limp rag doll of a man held over Dan by one hand, his smile boneless and decadent. He's like the space heater that radiates all their calm. The answer's somewhat late, but it's interesting, and –

A thought strikes him. "…When did he call dates?"

"You were busy, Riiiiita," Dan says, "cleaning his bathtubs for him." He lifts his hand briefly from Jepha's ankle to make a scrubbing motion.

And it _is_ like that. Quinn feels the black bitter rage choke up inside of him like tar, climbing up the back of his throat, and all his muscles go tense. Some people have everything, some people have to fight even to have nothing, and Quinn Allman is always the one stuck cleaning the bath of all the world's Ways.

Bert bites the end of his finger at the knuckle, reels him back to earth. "Don't be a fuckhead, fuckhead," he mutters.

"Don't be an asshole, asshole," Quinn answers like clockwork, but the bitterness dissipates into his bloodstream again, joining all those other poisons in their bid to make him the world's first genuinely toxic man.

"Patrick and Ryland," Jepha finishes, clearly determined to say his piece come hell, high water, and Dan's hand on his thigh. It takes him about three minutes to get the words out, though, and Quinn can tell that this really isn't the first joint that's been passed around this morning.

"And _Ryland_?" It seems improbable. Or insane.

"Yeah," Bert confirms, finally letting go of his finger. "Which one's he?"

Quinn sighs, and lets his spit-dampened finger hang by his side without wiping it. "One of the Cobras." Patrick and _Ryland_? That isn't a fight, that's a fucking human sacrifice, unless it's some sort of pussy whiner fight reffed by someone with actual … morals or something.

He wonders how Saporta feels about one of his bros pretty much signed up for a public suicide. Do Cobras have any concept of loyalty? Does it matter to that fucking prettyboy freak what happens to his gang?

Then he wonders where those two fucks were going when he ran into them.

"Ryland," he mutters, getting up on the bed on his knees. The ash tray spills over; they all ignore it, and Quinn curves awkwardly onto the bit of bed that's left for him, trying to take off his sharp-smelling t-shirt and lie down at the same time. "What the fuck?"

"It's a corn-based theme park," Bert snickers, and four laughs coil together in the pot smoke to form one cackling green entity; it's not what Bert means either, but a stoned seven AM after a long, busy (and in his case, brutal) night is not the time to talk about what fucked-up shit is going on in the nightmare hotel.

Bert combs his fingers through Quinn's hair; Dan's legs make a passable footrest and there are no complaints about the state of his sneakers (on the verge of falling apart). He could just pass out like this.

"Where the fuck were they going…" he mumbles into his own upper arm, as even Bert yanking on the hair on his neck fails to drag him awake again. It comes out in an incomprehensible groan, and he falls asleep to the freakish lullaby of Bert's girly giggles.

* * *

The answer to the "Ryland" and "what the fuck" questions becomes no more clear over the next few days, as vans come and go and are checked and rechecked. There are a _lot_ of guns coming in now, serious weaponry, and the Ways are sitting on a pile of semi-automatics like dragons on a mound of gold; all the while the cool, dispassionately avuncular silhouette of Toro cast his own shadow over it all.

"Someone's gotta know something," Quinn grumbles, when they're checking the parking lot for potential breaches, Bert smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and a short blunt knife nestling like a dick in Quinn's fist. It's so old the blade is practically serrated, but he knows how and where to shove it to stick and bleed a fucker to death. "One of his bros. Someone."

"Uh-huh," Dan observes. "I know, Quinnery, let's go and ask Peteypete. He won't try to poke out our eyeballs with the end of a shoelace." It's Quinn's own sarcasm flashed back at him like a piece in a barroom fight. Anyone else did that, they'd be looking for their teeth in their shit for the next few days.

"Hurley," Bert says, flicking his cigarette butt on the paintwork of something expensive and slick; the word is surely there to perk up Jepha's ears, and that's how he remembers the name. The gesture just makes Quinn's heart swell briefly. Bert is the best fuckhead anyone could know.

"Yeah." Quinn bats his singed eyelashes at Jepha. "You could fuuuuuuck it out of him." He mimes a grinding motion with his hips for entirely unnecessary emphasis and Dan scowls at him. "Ten minutes of the old Jepha magic and you'd know _every_thing."

"Like his bank sort code," Bert puts in, distractedly. He's watching the elevator doors, his hands convulsively rolling another cigarette as he plays sentinel.

Jepha's grinning, his hoodie's neckline stretched over his chin, and he looks somewhere between flattered and annoyed.

"I don't even think he'd need ten minutes," Quinn adds, watching Jepha burrow into his hoodie even further, biting his lip.

"Yeah, but do you think he'd remember any of it afterwards?" Dan snorts, grabbing the back of Jepha's neck in the palm of one huge hand. The pressure is probably stronger than it looks; Jepha stands up straight and stops squirming about.

That's not the _only_ reason for suggesting it, though:

It's not that he thinks about them – Hurley, Jepha - together just because they _look good_ together, that would be absurd.

Just because they're both small and heavily tattooed and placid-looking, that's no reason to think about them fucking. It would look hot, but so would any number of other combinations. He can think of thirty off the top of his head, some of which involve him.

No, he has the evidence of what he knows about them both (slightly more about Jepha, admittedly, but he's neither blind nor stupid), that little catalogue of foibles and fetishes that he keeps in his head, to fuel the speed of his wrist whenever he gets time to himself. He knows the hungry looks passing one way, the twitching of an eager knife, and he knows better than that semi-obvious semi-on that Hurley thinks he's concealing just how well that happy blade would fit against the bend of Jepha's throat.

And his thighs and his arms and his chest and his balls;

There aren't many places that knife wouldn't fit and there aren't many places it wouldn't be welcomed. He knows that, and he knows the sounds they'd make, and he knows the moment where stifling them would become necessary, with a fist or a dick or just by the tightening of limber fingers over an inky throat. He knows the choking and the grunts and the heavy breaths. He knows them with the way his own fingers shift fast and shameless, fast and shameful, over the length of his dick, when he listen.

And when he listens - he doesn't open up his jeans, not right away, not yet, just groping, squeezing – and when he moves his hand he can see pretty fucking clearly everything, right inside his head.

They would fit together well, that one or two times. Pretty skinny inky bodies sliding over each other on the slippery bed of blood they'd made, and the words that he _knows_, that he's heard said before, through motel walls, words that claw at his libido like angry tigers. He knows their tone and timbre and the precise spacing between them:

fuck  
yes  
fuck me please  
fuck me  
break me  
hurt me  
choke me  
please

fuck

This breathless litany plays in his head whenever he's jerking off now, the lyrical soundtrack to an imagined tryst and no less hot for being imaginary.

Sooner or later those two are going to have to fuck. Or one, or the other, or even _he_, are going to fucking explode from the waiting. What happens with Dan when that happens is anyone's guess, but based on past experience the answer is _not a lot_.

But right _now_ Quinn's going crazy more from not knowing what bullshit is behind this unorthodox and suicidal line-up choice, not from jerking off to the thought of Jepha's fucked-up sex life.

"Maybe there isn't a reason," Dan offers, scanning the outer wall with an expert eye for structural weaknesses or signs of tunnelling. If there are any, he'll find them. Dan knows breaking and entering like Quinn knows rage: intimate, long-term, and instinctive. "Maybe they're just not thinking. Maybe Gerard's just dumb."

Bert's quick rebuttal is predictable but it still twists Quinn's stomach like a garrotte made of his own organs. "He's not fucking dumb," Bert snaps, turning away. And that's the truth, that's the truth – he's a lot of things Quinn dislikes, Quinn fucking _loathes_, but Gerard fucking spoilt asshole rich kid Way isn't exactly stupid any more than Quinn is. Stupid people don't live long in this business. But just because it's the truth doesn't mean it doesn't sting.

There's an edge-filled silence, sharp and rotten, as they check under cars and vans for any kind of cracks in the asphalt that might be concealed there. Jepha 'accidentally' scrapes the paint on one low-slung smart-looking metallic black mother with the studs on his belt (only an idiot wouldn't know what that belt's really for), and Quinn feels a little better. Even though there will be yet another polite-but-slightly-threatening talk later, from whoever: I don't suppose you have any idea how much it costs to repaint a vintage S-Type in that condition. When actually yes, Quinn knows exactly how little it costs. Fuck them.

The questions still aren't answered, but at least they know the parking lot is secure. So the place is safe for the big money bout tonight; Quinn says as much.

"Slaughter," Bert corrects him, all smiles again, bouncing on the balls of his feet as they pass an upended bath leaning against a pillar: Quinn's pretty sure it's 'his' bath. The one he used, anyway. "It's gonna be a redecoration, not a bout, they'll be picking bits of … whatshisname–"

"Ryland," Quinn supplies, inspecting the bath. There's a black mark, a round dot the size of the ball of his thumb, on the inside wall of it, and he can't remember if it was there before or not.

"–Ryyyyyyyyyyland," Bert pronounces it funny, like he can't believe it's an actual name, "out of Mikey's hair. Everyone in the front row."

He licks his lips, pokes out the tip of his huge tongue, and mimes lifting up chunks like sushi with chopsticks. And they're all laughing again. Everyone's seen sprays of blood hit the younger Way over the face without changing his expression, but surely actual _lumps_ have to be a different story.

The elevator doors open and Quinn's palm diamond and his knife are ready, his heart is thumping, his whole body is twanging like, like… because the mirrored box is not empty.

"I thought _I_ was checking the parking lot," Travis says, apparently not bothered by three knives, a gun heavy enough it could be used as a cudgel (it's Russian, that's all Quinn knows, and Dan won't let him mess with it), a palm diamond (his own goddamn invention), and four notoriously violent thug motherfuckers aiming it all at his unprotected person. Either he is _monumentally high_, or a total fucking psycho.

"We have," Quinn says. It may be more of a snarl than normal speech, but he thinks it's too polite all the same. More than the guy has earned yet.

"Oh well, then," Travis says with that impenetrable not-quite-smile, and the sarcasm is clear to Quinn even if it passes by everyone else, "less work for me." And he stands aside with his arms extended like a doorman to let them into the elevator first.

Bristling with all the _fuck you_s he wants to shower on the pisspot's head, Quinn joins his bros in the mirrored box. His heart is still pounding as Travis gets in, and he's calculating all the while: enclosed space, four of them, one of _him_. If anything happens on the way up to ground floor they're okay – but he still doesn't want this fucking fuck in the air he's breathing.

"It'll be a pussy tap-out fight," Jepha says in a normal level voice, like the last few minutes didn't just happen. "I'm telling you." He leans towards Bert and mouths, _no chunks_ with an expression of exaggerated regret, and finally Quinn can spare some breath for laughing again.

What he doesn't spare is a glance for how Travis reacts to this. There are some things that don't matter in the face of their cast-iron conspiracy of laughter and one of those is the ugly hierarchy of The Business. Fuck them _all_.

And when the elevator doors open and he's faced with a Cobra (the short one, Nate, whose movements are sharp and venomously quick), who looks as startled as he feels to see them there, another cog in the back of his brain gets whirring and interlocks with a whole bunch of other questions.

"Get outta the fucking door, pee-breath," Bert complains, shoving him in the small of the back. They step past Nate like angry cats passing on a narrow path, and Quinn notes that Travis _doesn't_ get out.

* * *

As it turns out, they're not going to get to see the fight anyway.

"This is _bullshit_," Quinn snaps, the door to the conference room keeping his protest from the ears of any random passersby. He kicks the leg of the nearest chair, for want of a more effective means of expressing himself. The chair leg cracks.

"We need perimeter security," Toro says, calm and cool and polite and smooth in his suit, the fluffy explosion of ponytail behind his slicked-back hair lending his otherwise suavely old-world Mafioso figure a hint of the ridiculous which it is still dangerous to laugh at. "There are a lot of very important people attending this fight, gentlemen–"

_Gentlemen_, Quinn thinks sourly. The word tastes of urinal cakes. No one calls them that unless they're using weapons-grade sarcasm. His probation officer used to refer to him as a gentleman; it's a word that comes with a built-in sneer, no matter how hard someone works to conceal it. Bert is picking his nose and listening _very_ intently, looking like he doesn't give a damn.

"—and we have to be able to ensure their safety, and ours. You are the only gang currently here with the luxury of no direct stake in this fight." Toro pauses to note something on his palm pilot and just as Quinn's about to speak up in the silence with more protests, he goes on. Quinn's certain he did that on purpose. "If I was to give the Cobras or the Fall Out boys perimeter duties for the fight, it would be … less effective."

"And _your_ guys?" Bert asks, examining a booger with more scrutiny than he's yet given Toro, because psychology isn't just for guys in suits with creases, and Quinn fucking loves Bert with his entire wretched heart for that.

"Bryar and Iero will also be patrolling the basement perimeter, externally," Toro assures him. "You will not be without back-up."

Quinn scowls. He knows this is the response Toro wants, wants to piss him off and make him defensive and incautious, that he's being played like a tape deck, his obvious pride buttons pushed, but he can't help himself: "We don't _need_\--"

"Shut up, Quinn," Bert murmurs.

"Please, allow me this moment of … intimacy," Toro adds, "but I cannot imagine why you're so invested in watching this fight anyhow." He is ignoring them entirely in favour of his palm pilot, and the conversation is clearly over, frustration boiling like hot tar in Quinn's throat. "It is after all a refereed match."  


* * *

"Told you," Jepha mutters as they leave, "a pussy fight."

"I'd like to see a fight between two pussies," Bert muses as the door shuts behind them, slicing away the businesslike shape of Toro calling out to someone on one of those shiny electric toys he has so many of.

"Well you _can't_," Quinn says, "we're on perimeter like fucking mongrel guard dogs."

"No, I mean real pussies," Bert insists.

Dan snorts. They keep walking. Quinn notes they're headed towards the elevators, and there's a good chance – yup, Bert smacks the _down_ button with his elbow – they're going to check out the half of the basement where the fight will be. The complex of rooms: cages, pits, tables, medical supplies, bleachers, morgue. A ready-made trouble paradise for people who like watching people die. That's a group to which Quinn rarely belongs without reason.

The doors ping open.

"Like, Siamese fighting cunts," Bert elaborates with a disturbing hand gesture, in case they're not following his line of thought. "Grrr! Grrr! Grrrr! _Splut!_ Argh!"

Jepha's cracking up, of course.

"How would you know which one'd won?" Quinn sizes up the metal detector at the door to the fight rooms. It's brand new out of the box and shiny and not flush to the door by a long shot. Anyone wanting to smuggle weapons in could just pass them round the outside of the thing, providing they had an inside guy to look the other way or distract the other dude. Which he doesn't doubt 'they' do. Or – Quinn thinks back to juvvie, to prison, to the lessons he learnt there – they could just use something that isn't metal. You can do untold damage with a sharpened chair leg (and he has), a whittled toothbrush handle (and it's been done to him), a lighter-fused plastic bag (both), or just a brick in a sock (neither, but he's seen it done).

"Whoever comes first, I guess," Bert doesn't seem interested in that detail. "PUSSY JUICE EXPLOSION! Or … taps out first. They _are_ pussies."

Beside them, Jepha chokes on another laugh and pulls his hood up, like that'll somehow shut out the ridiculous shit coming out of Bert's mouth.

"What, like … disembodied pussies or ones attached to women?" Dan interrupts, sounding worryingly thoughtful. Jepha pulls his hood down, presumably to get enough air in his lungs for the horrified laughter.

From the other side of the doorway and some distance back, Hurley calls, "I'm guessing you guys are armed?"

Quinn rolls his eyes so hard they nearly fall out. What kind of dumbfuck question is that? Is _anyone_ in this building not fucking armed? Even the roaches – and there _are_ roaches, goddamnit, every fucking building has them – probably carry shanks if not actual pieces. Then he catches a glimpse of the guy, his cropped hair and neat beard and politely deferential manner overlaying some pretty fucking obvious sadism, and thinks of him fucking Jepha with a knife at his throat. All the blood goes to his pants and he puts his palms on his head to steady himself.

"GUESS," Bert suggests. He adds for the benefit of his bros, "Disembodied, I guess, or you won't be able to see anything."

"So, sort of … floating fighting cunts," Quinn summarises, peering through the doorway and trying to clear his head of tattooed, skinny bodies slipping in a sea of blood and sweat.

"Raising an important question," Dan says gravely, as Jepha doubles up with laughter and stumbles into his side. "_Can_ fighting cunts float?" Dan catches Jepha's waist and holds him steady, and Quinn can feel Hurley's eyes boring into them from the empty bleachers across the naked, fightless fight room.

"I need one of you to step through the metal detector," Hurley says. He has several faggy-looking pins on his lapels and a screwdriver in his raised hand, and Quinn can see it plunging into an eye-socket so easily. He'd be fucking careful about picking a fight with this dude.

"Yeah?" he calls back, "Your _mom_ needs me to pay her for that blowie but it was so _shit_ she should be paying _me_."

"I need to test the settings," Hurley sighs, like Quinn didn't even speak. He's hardly raising his voice, but it carries in the echo chamber of an empty room.

And it's Jepha who goes and stands under the grey metal arch with his hands in his pockets, setting off all the alarms.

"I guess it works," Jepha says innocently, biting his lower lip.

"I guess you want to get your _man pussy_ back out here," Bert instructs, and they collapse in mutual giggles.

* * *

As the hotel fills up – the bar first, because the Ways are assholes and tonight they're stupid as well: getting their guests good and drunk drives the bets up to reckless stakes, drives up the profit, making that metal detector all the more necessary – Toro is out, shaking hands and smiling. The Ways are nodding their weird little hellos in staggered unison. And Bert and his boys are on patrol, in theory.

In practice they're pacing like caged bears up and down the corridor outside the fight rooms, the surprisingly broad strip that separates the parking lot from the bloodbath, and curves in corners around the whole complex, bizarrely fire-escape compliant for such an illegal place.

"Reffed by who?" Bert wonders aloud.

"Can't bribe them to let Stump just kill off the cornfield," says Quinn, who knows Bert quite well enough to know what's on his mind. He picks a line of rubbery grime out from under his quick-bitten thumbnail with the point of his knife.

"Not enough money," Bert says sadly.

"And we wouldn't get to see it." Quinn stops in mid-pace and all four of them step away from the door to the fight rooms as the elevator slides open and the first of the guests step out onto the carpet. A man and a woman, tall and short, both pale-faced and strange-looking with eerie smiles; they take no notice of the guys in the corridor but mince – and they _do_ mince – straight through to the fight rooms, where the murky and violent lower echelons of the organisations are ready and waiting to frisk them, in ill-fitting tuxedos.

Quinn can't help thinking that Bert's boys are here as much to provide an illusion of security as that shitty metal detector is; perhaps Toro should have given them little fucking footman uniforms to complete the delusion of safety. He bets those creepy Way fucks would get off on that, in fact.

As it is, Quinn's Queen t-shirt has holes in the hems and bloodstains in the middle, Bert's wearing fingerless gloves indoors despite the sweltering heat, Jepha has on an inexplicable pork pie hat and Dan's trainers have orange bailer twine replacing long-ago stolen shoelaces. Once someone obviously thought he was a suicide risk (though no one talks about it), and they take your laces for that. Quinn's lost lots of laces that way.

The elevator doors open again five minutes later, and they take off down the corridor to circle the rooms, check corners, check doors; Quinn and Bert, Dan and Jepha.

They split again a minute later, zygote-like, and Quinn's not happy about it – odds are Bert's gone to watch the fight somehow, or to watch Gerard (Quinn spits on the floor) watching the fight.

He catches up, finds Bert lurking in the fire door between the corridor and the parking lot, leaning on the bar and swinging his weight gently back and forth, swaying the door. "Shh," Bert says, like Quinn's a fucking elephant. "Look."

Quinn follows Bert's gaze into the gloomy parking lot; half-hidden by a pillar and a large van with a broken indicator light he can see two tall shapes leaning on concrete, deep in conversation. One has a baseball cap and an irritating air he's already used to now, and the other is wearing a Hawaiian shirt – just from the angle of the elbow he knows that the eyes of this body are starers, attached to an _elite interrogator_. The one he _doesn't_ like to think about Jepha fucking.

Saporta and Travis. Well, well.

Bert's opened his mouth to yell something – probably 'fuckass' or some shit, it's that time of night, 'pee and poo and pee' is more a daylight thing – and Quinn slaps his hand over Bert's mouth, grabs the back of his head with the other, his knife sticking up in the air behind it like a real dangerous cartoon Indian feather. Bert licks his palm; Quinn doesn't react.

"You want me to follow them?" Quinn half-mouths, half-whispers. Bert bites the raised flesh at the base of Quinn's middle finger, a sharp and painful nip. He screws up his face at the noise and hisses, "_Do you?_" under his breath.

Bert nods, Quinn's aching palm still flat and vulnerable against his lips. Quinn kisses the back of his own hand, the middle of Bert's forehead, and releases his bro.

Stepping into the parking lot he notices again that it's cooler in here, much warmer back in the basement. Not good for the fights. People get dehydrated too fast. The cars rise like trees in a forest in front of him, deceptive claimants at being ideal stalking cover – they would be if they weren't all so reflective that the tiniest movement is reflected over and over like a fucking fairground hall of mirrors. Quinn is careful, letting the swish of valets in cars mask his own movements, confusing the sweep of reflected light, making new shadows; he gets to the concrete pillar with his breath clogged in his nostrils and motor oil on his sneakers, in time to hear, "Immunity from prosecution."

Saporta's voice, low and soft.

"And … a sweetener," he adds.

"You can _have_ the knife guy," Travis says in the same stoner monotone of amusement he used earlier that week, watching Quinn turn his former bro into toxic swill, "he's small game and no one will want him. No one cares. But I can't make any promises about indemnity, not at this stage."

"I think you'll find you _ought_ to," Saporta says, and Quinn can't see the smile but he can kinda _hear_ it. He clutches the handle of his knife, wishes he'd slipped on the diamond too but can't risk the noise of movement now, the rustle of clothing. Stupid. Fuck.

"Is that a threat, Gabriel?"

"Blackmail, bebé," Saporta confesses, "happens when you're not playing by your own fucking rules." He sounds almost regretful, like, _oops, it's obviously a little mistake_ on Travis's side; soon he'll see the light and get right on doing whatever Saporta says. Conviction, that's the word. Ironically.

"I can't promise shit in that field," Travis says, sounding almost tired; Quinn flattens the small of his back up against the support pillar and breathes long, shallow breaths to keep his lungs from exploding with the fucking pressure. Whatever it is that's said next, he misses most of it as another valet parks a car and slams the door, sending a shockwave flashing through the vast manmade underground cavern.

"—religious," says Saporta. Quinn's pretty fucking certain he misheard that, or things are even fucking weirder than he'd ever suspected.

"Bullshit," Travis replies sweetly. "The best I can give your boys _or indeed myself_ right now is the name of a guy who's good for new papers. And one who can get them lined up at an electronic level. Okay?"

Quinn's ears prick up. This sounds interesting – not that he can ever afford the services of someone like that since they're always super fucking hot and therefore super fucking costly, but the offer of making the past go away at the click of a button (at least the paper trail of the past, Quinn knows memories are harder to remove, especially from yourself) is a holy fucking grail to anyone in this game.

"Introductions," Saporta says, clearly concluding a long haggling session. "Good faith, and an unarmed Andy Hurley, alone."

"Works for me," Travis confirms. "Consider this your pact with the Romans, Mr. Iscariot."

"Or _yours_," Saporta snorts. It sounds like the kind of remark that's accompanied by a salute. Quinn knows the Cobra salute by now; they probably don't realise it, but he's got it filed.

He just about stops breathing altogether as Saporta strides past him without looking, headed back to the fire doors and the fight his boy is most assuredly about to lose and lose hard. Probably, Quinn realises, so that this conversation can take place – Saporta looks the type to play chess, and his boys would do fucking _anything_ for him. It's creepy.

But Travis is still here, and Quinn can't risk leaving until more cars come down and the start time for the fight is soon so more cars _aren't_ coming down and the knife in his hand twitches like a horny dick and he wonders who it will disadvantage the most if he just slits – okay, tears, with this knife – Travis's long skinny throat right now. Just reaches around the pillar – he has the element of surprise –

But it will be him, Quinn knows. Because an undercover cop dead will benefit 'GeeWay', and right now anything that protects the source, the sore focus of Bert's fascination, lays Quinn and ultimately Bert's tenderest parts open and raw. There is fuck-all he can do to stop this.

So he stands still and tries to ignore the itch of healing skin on his injured fist.

"Disashi." Travis's voice is low and urgent. Into a cell, Quinn guesses. "I got head Cobra willing to hand over, can you send someone?"

There is a breathy pause.

"I don't give a fuck about credit, Dee, I am getting fucking 401k-less thrown out on my ass if any of this sees the light of day," he says, and it's the first time Quinn's heard him sound ruffled beyond a kind of gut-level 'eesh' at the bath-side. "It's entirely your goddamn baby. Yes it _is_. Well, then I'll just have to fake them. No, I have logs. Eighty glorious motherfucking mind-numbing hours."

There's a pause which, to Quinn's justly paranoid mind, chimes with suspicious vibes from the other side of the pillar. "Nah. It's like a house of cards right n—yeah, and I'd like _not_ to be under it when that happens, if it's all the same to you."

Quinn feels his palm sweat soaking into the leather cord wrapped around his knife handle. The knife smells like a part of him, and it's got enough of his blood on it over the years it might as well be a relative.

"Uh-huh. Give me a couple more days, Dis- that's all I ask. That and Brian's number." There's a silence like taffy, sticky and extensive. "Yeah, _that_ Brian, asshole. Did you think I meant Bryan fucking Adams? Jesus."

Hilarious though any cop's aggravation is in the ten seconds before it results in a baton over the back of the neck, Quinn's starting to get a tickly throat. Too much weed and too much exposure to virulent chemical fumes in various jobs have ruined his oesophagus (when it's this badly fucked you sure as shit remember what it's called) and palate, and years of hawking up phlegm to fire at deserving targets have left their tracks on his ability _not to_.

He holds his breath again. Quinn would like very much not to die, or to disappear back into the bowels of the correctional facility system that he only survived last time by the very skin of his teeth.

Travis sighs. "Yeah, tell them you haven't heard from me, then. I am _already_ fired, Dis, there isn't a lot left to threaten with…" He chuckles something wry-sounding. "Okay, apart from that. Would you really let it happen, though? Knowing what I know." There's a long pause in which the tickle in Quinn's throat takes over the world of his perception. "Exactly. Peace, Dee."

And at last, at fucking last he gets off the line and walks off – Quinn sees his shadow, long in approaching headlights, extend and sweep and then flicker back into shape as the lights move. He's heading to the elevator.

Quinn goes right the fuck on holding his breath, counting to ten and back down again; doubling back and faking out have given him a broken elbow before. Learn from your motherfucking mistakes, that's his view, learn from them or you won't get to make any new ones.

He only lets himself cough when he's back in the corridor where he's meant to be. Bert's gone, but he finds him easy enough: leaning in a corner, the juncture of two walls, picking the oxide paint from the unplastered blocks with the tip of his knife. Humming something; Quinn recognises _The Star-Spangled Banner_ and snorts to himself.

Bert flicks a shard of oxide paint at him, raising his eyebrows in silent enquiry.

"He's a cop," Quinn offers no preamble, leaning into the perpendicular wall. Bert kicks him idly in the foot. "Travis."

"You going to tell Gee?" Bert asks, toeing the floor. Quinn doesn't let this casualness fool him, Bert's obviously straining for a reply, but he can't help twisting up inside at the name.

"Are _you_?" he tries to cough out the itch in his throat, makes a sound like a broken waste disposal unit which Bert pretends not to notice.

"Only if I need to," Bert says, still scuffing at the floor. Quinn reaches forward to tuck a trailing strand of Bert's matted hair behind his ear before he can do it himself, and Bert snaps at his hand, his injured hand.

"I guess we stay away from his radar," Quinn tucks another piece of hair behind Bert's ear, dislodging the first one.

"I guess your mom," Bert grins. He doesn't finish; he doesn't need to. _Your mom_ means a lot of things with Bert, but this _your mom_ is always Quinn's favourite. He lets out a smile, and lets go of Bert's hair.

"He thinks we're small game."

"We _are_ small game," Bert picks himself off the wall and nods solemnly, "small like a virus."

"Small like your mom." Quinn scratches the underside of his own chin with the handle of his knife.

"Small like your _dick_."

"Yeah, likewise, fucker."

* * *

It's probably unwise to snigger at Ryland's sling and bruises, his acres of amateur stitches, but Quinn and Dan are already stoned, that's why they're _in_ the kitchen, and he looks so stupid hunched over a bowl of whatever the fuck it is, and neither of them can help themselves. An industrial tub of maple syrup dangles on galvanised steel hurdle from Dan's huge hand, and Quinn bumps him, sends it swinging as they cackle helplessly.

The fly-light buzzes an obnoxious back-beat, doing nothing to mitigate how bitchy Quinn's laughter sounds even to his own ears. Dan's wheezing is warm and welcome beside him, as sweet and part of weed euphoria as the tub of maple syrup.

Ryland glares at them from under his stupidly thick, long fringe. He has two black eyes and a cut across his nose that takes in one eyelid. Not so fucking pretty now, all swollen and cut and black-purple-blue-green-brown.

"You don't even _know_," he spits. His mouth is distorted with blood-filled welts. Quinn can't stop laughing.

"Have you _seen_ your face?" Dan asks, swinging the tub of maple syrup from one finger. Quinn leans on his arm, still chuckling. Fuck, how can anyone miss that face? It looks like a clown threw up on it.

The fly-light flickers; Ryland puts a hand over the top of his meal, like he's guarding it from spit. Quinn might've, but he has cottonmouth, and with the whole hotel accustomed to sharing air with Iero too they've all grown kinda adept at dodging airborne mucus.

"Your time is fucking coming," Ryland mutters.

"Why thank you." Dan says with an exaggerated bow, and he cracks up half-way down; the Cobra's stare could melt through walls as they leave, still giggling. "In my country," Dan elaborates as they quit the kitchens, putting on his Crazy Foreign Guy voice, "we use men like him for donkey. Give bad rides. So we kill donkey, make soup. Soup no taste good. So we waste soup. Men like him … bad _ass_."

Which is when Quinn has to lean on the nearest wall for a few minutes to catch his breath. While he's grazing his cheek on flock wallpaper, Quinn says, "Where the fuck is Jepha?" mostly so he knows he can still remember everyone's name.

Dan's not done with Crazy Foreign Guy, not when it produces such good results. "Him go fucky-fuck. Dan find out later. Dan see bruises. Dan like bruises."

And Quinn doesn't need to be horny on top of fucking stoned, thanks.

Dan gives him a sideways look with those big frog eyes, and says sagely, "Quinn like bruises," in his fucking fucking stupid Crazy Foreign Guy voice.

"Go and get fucked," Quinn suggests.

"Later."

They pass Trohman heading the other way; he eyes the bucket of maple syrup and Quinn thinks he sees a smirk of recognition – one stoner to another – but he can't be assed to call Mr. Jewish Princess on it yet; ten minutes later they're nearly back at their own suite and he's merely hungry rather than high.

"Fucking who?" Quinn asks like it's only just occurred to him instead of playing on his mind like a porno loop, putting his hip to the door. It opens, which is wrong, because they locked it before they went foraging and Bert's in "meetings" with fucking _Way_ and –

Quinn's internal Filing System of Fuck Yous throws a name up beside the startled face that greets him; it doesn't hurt that the last time he saw that face it was wearing much the same _what the fuck are you doing here_ expression. Nate.

The room may or may not have been ransacked – they keep the suite in such a bombsite array of fucked-up chaos only broken glass would really prove a break-in – but Nate has a pillow in his hand and odds are pretty fucking good he's looking for _something_ Or looking to plant something.

There are a few things Quinn doesn't do: second chances. Green vegetables. Deodorant. Betraying his bros. And warnings. He doesn't do warnings, because in the time it takes to say, "I'm going to fucking take your face off, you son of a whore, don't ever go near Bert again", the prick has time to defend himself. And Quinn's Bad Luck's poster boy. He can't afford to give someone time to get their hand in their pocket. So he just thunders in and sweeps the blade round without a sound and puts his whole skinny knobbly weight behind it, and he only _thinks_ the "fuck you".

Nate's _very_ fast. He gets out of the way and leaves Quinn off-balance, exposed to the links of bike-chain that flash from seeming nowhere across his jaw.

Quinn doesn't even register the pain at first, he's too busy slamming back into Dan, slamming back to avoid the back-swing – and _then_ the explosion of agony as he feels blood tickling and trickling down his cheek.

"Fuck," Dan observes, helpfully.

Quinn dives under the arc of the chain, lunges up and forwards with his forehead, smashing into Nate's face somewhere. The crunch suggests he has hit cartilage; he's also bent his injured hand the wrong way against Nate's sternum steadying himself and it fucking _hurts_. He follows the motion with his arm as best he can, jerking the blunt and notched blade of his knife into Nate's jugular – and as the momentum of the chain smacks it hard and brutal over his shoulder-blades, his scarred and acne-pocked shoulders, Quinn sinks his teeth into Nate's cheek and hangs on.

When he tears the blade from the Cobra's neck there's a pause, the caesura between a fatal wound and the body realising it's been sunk. And then, two heart-beats later, there's blood, blood fucking everywhere.

Dan yanks him back into the doorway by his waist, both hands. Maple syrup has gone.

"QUINN."

There's blood in his fucking _eyes_. He has a ragged mouthful of Nate's flesh clamped between his teeth, his jaw and his shoulders and his wrist (his already-fucked wrist) burn and shriek with delayed exertion-pain, and there's Cobra blood in his _eyes_.

"Hold still, turn round," Dan instructs calmly, his hand the steady anchor to the real world, still clutching Quinn's waist.

"_Which_?" Quinn barks, spitting cheek-flesh from his lips. His stomach keeps trying to heave, the fucking pussy. He suppresses a spark of fury at this – he can't fight his own gag reflex by punching it. He's _tried_.

"Fuck you," Dan says, and as he rotates on the spot something rough-but-soft smears the thick, already clotting human bean juice from his eyelashes and nostrils.

He inhales through the thick stink of hot copper and opens one gummy eye.

"Yeah, fucking great, now it'll stick _open_ instead of sticking closed," Dan says. He's holding the hem of his t-shirt into a point, twisted fabric, thick with the blood it's soaked from Quinn's eyelids, from his eyelashes. "Shit. Go and wash your face."

Stepping around the now mostly-red and slippery mess of the suite to get to the bathroom, Quinn nearly falls on his ass on top of some glossy (and now unreadable) magazines, collides with the open door of the empty wardrobe (Bert had, he remembers, been insistent that if they hit the back at a high enough speed they'd coming crashing out into Narnia; as a result the back panel is completely splintered to fuck and there was an intense session of picking wood fragments out of Jepha's forearms with some hair tweezers), and finally gets to scrubbing gore from his face with wads of soggy tissue.

"This is going to take some explaining," Dan says from outside.

"We're explaining fucking nothing," Quinn corrects, flinging more blood-soaked slabs of paper into the toilet bowl.

"You're going to block the toilet, asshole, we're gonna have to explain _that_."

Quinn pauses before throwing the next wad at the bin instead. "Nate is going to disappear and it's going to be _someone else's problem_."

He can hear Dan's disbelieving laughter wheezing through the door like the voice of God's judgement on his basic standards of hygiene; the voice of God's fucking hypocritical judgement. "You're going to _clean_?"

The bottle of toilet bleach bounces off the mattress; Quinn's shitty at a lot of things, but he's a damn good shot. It lands right in the centre of the pillow Nate dropped. Quinn picks up the second bottle of bleach from down the back of the toilet cistern and holds it up like a cop's baton as he gets back into the room – Dan's shut the fucking door at last – already looking for the box of surgical masks, the box of sterile gloves. "It's what I do," he says in Movie Trailer voice, and Dan rolls his eyes.

Quinn really fucking hates the fucking Cobras now. Really really twice as much as before, a thousand times more. He didn't _need_ this goddamn work. He didn't _need_ to be thinking about who to pin this messy murder on. And he didn't _need_ to still have fucking blood in his nostrils.

It's going to take a long time and a lot of work.

* * *

They're still prowling on high alert two days later. Quinn's on the highest alert of all, wondering if the obsessive finding and sealing of potential flaws in the security is just cover for testing which of them might be responsible for the _tragedy_, but Bert assures him Way doesn't give that much of a shit about a dead snake.

"Gabe's going to fucking explode soon," he adds, mostly to wind Quinn up. He sounds pretty fucking gleeful about the prospect all the same.

Quinn scratches the scabs on his cheek. "No he isn't," he mutters as Bert slaps his hand away, twice, "he's got an angle."

"Your mom's got an angle," Bert yawns. Sleep has been something of an elusive luxury over the last two days.

"Yeah," Jepha pipes up, his hand over his mouth to stifle his own yawn, "an _acute_ one."

"Jepha Howard, was that a _math_ joke?"

They whip about, heads up like four tattooed, knife-wielding meerkats, and there at the corner they were about to turn is a close-cropped head, thick-rimmed glasses, a tidy beard, and a jacket peppered with band buttons. It's always a little wiggy how Hurley manages to look so harmless and kind of … introverted. Neat, sweet, and shy. It's wiggy because Quinn's seen the interrogation tapes and the soft, hi-how-are-ya voice never changes even when he's slicing off fingers knuckle by bleeding knuckle.

"Uh," Jepha looks like he's keen on crawling into his hoodie and disappearing like some tattooed turtle; Hurley's not dumb, and the change in atmosphere sends him almost reeling back, withdrawing the cautious smirk of physical familiarity so fast it's like a facial spasm. Which answers one or two of Quinn's unasked questions.

"Fourth floor fire escape?" Quinn asks briskly, businesslike, because the fall-out of this is gonna be the boring sort of awkward, the shitty kind of messy, and he doesn't want to be around when it happens. Right now he mostly wants to be in bed, asleep, with Bert's sharp whistling snore the lullaby to uncomplicated dreams – and it's as likely as those uncomplicated dreams or him getting through a whole week without punching someone.

"We've been," Hurley says, clearly grateful for the abrupt change of subject. "Pete is – um, you know what? I think the roof needs someone, I didn't see anyone around there."

"Not iiiiiit," Bert sings out, punching Quinn in the upper arm.

"I can hear the bed calling my name," Dan agrees. "It's saying, 'Dan Whitesides, come and do dirty dirty sleep to me'."

"Oh fuck _you_," Quinn sighs, but he's not going to argue. It won't take more than half an hour to get to the roof, make the door im-fucking-penetrable enough, and get the fuck back down to the suite. If that means he can sleep without anyone bitching him out later he doesn't care. And there's no point in trying to push Jepha forward for it; if Dan's going to bed, Jepha's going to bed.

Hurley looks like he's already in motion, he's so twitchy to get away.

"Covered," Quinn mutters, like it's permission for the guy to get the fuck out. Hurley gets the fuck out, back the way he came, and tired though he is Quinn feels this stab of annoyance, because those two have _so obviously_ fucked and he didn't get to hear a fucking goddamn thing.

There's a moment of headspin – dissonance – when he comes up out of the little door on the roof (one of three, it's a damn big hotel) and it's bright blazing blue-sky'd daylight up there. Inside the building time has meaning only by the way it's sawed into chunks like a corpse in a bathtub: shifts, cycles, and drawn curtains. Just making the experience that little bit more druggy fucking weird.

Up here it's noon. The sky's wide open and the air must be like the inside of an oven at ground level, but there are enough storeys between Quinn and the sidewalk that there's the beginnings of a breeze getting under his sweaty hair. There are birds, so far up they're like black dots of ash on a carpet, but no clouds even at the building-strewn ends of the horizon.

He kind of doesn't want to go back inside.

Quinn takes "thorough" as his excuse and gets to wandering around the edge of the roof. There's not a lot up here, just spitballs and fragments of shit from the walls, a dumping ground for cigarette butts and one very used-looking condom. But he looks anyway. Looks for grappling hook grooves, for mud on the fire escapes, for any signs of life on the adjoining rooftops; and then he gives up half-way round. Does it fucking matter?

He's just lit up a cigarette when one of the other doors opens, and, moving on long-ingrained instinct, Quinn ditches the cigarette and ducks behind the nearest vent, one of the unchecked ones. There's a rope looped around it.

It's impossible _not_ to recognise Mikey Way's gait almost immediately, it's too freakish to be anyone else's, and even if he didn't dress like a goth prostitute from the future there's still that mop of weird hair that looks like a magpie's wing. Quinn doesn't move. If Mikey Way wants to do his own fucking reconnaissance that's fine with him; it saves him the work _and_ inconveniences a Way.

Because Quinn's slumped with his back against the hot metal curve of a vent, the hairs on his arms singeing, he's facing the right way to see the rope stretching over the edge of the building begin to tauten and twitch.

Later he will say it all happened too quickly, but that is – and his bros know it is, even if no one else guesses – pure industrial strength bullshit.

There's a good few seconds before the black-clad figure drops silently onto the roof, a few seconds where he could have shouted something, but he simply holds his breath.

Then there's another moment when he could have darted out from behind the vent and confused the fuck, but he doesn't do that, either.

Quinn shields his eyes from the sun, and that's all.

Mikey Way is already in motion when the bullet hits him in the stomach. He's running _towards_ the intruder, his hand reaching for something at his belt, probably a gun, but for once his reaction aren't the fastest thing around, and two shots catch him in the belly.

The thing about gut shots, Quinn knows, is that it can take a minute for people to register them, and if you've just shot someone and they haven't stopped moving, the instinct is always, _always_ to stick around and shoot them again just to make sure. If you're out to off someone and they're not down, you can't make yourself leave without seeing the job is done.

So the guy's still there with his black sweater in the heat of the midday sun, and while he's readying himself for another shot, Quinn does what he's supposedly here to do; a little too late, and without much enthusiasm. He pitches his knife at the guy's shoulder (Gerard will want him alive, if only to kill him himself), end over end over end over end. He's kept this blunt and notched, scraped and sweat-stinking, blood-rusted knife for precisely this kind of work; it's perfectly, perfectly weighted for throwing. And Quinn is an excellent shot.

The knife knocks the guy to the floor.

Quinn gets over there as fast as he can. Stamps on his wrist until the crack and the scream tell him bones are broken. Snatches up his knife and hacks the laces from the military-tight boots, sitting on the guy's chest while feeble attempts to hit him off of there are made. Not … too feeble, some of them draw blood, but Quinn ignores them. He has the boots off fast enough.

He looks back over his shoulder. Mikey's still standing, his hands pressed to his stomach, his mouth open in what looks like the beginning of a sentence. His face is pale, paler even than before, almost white against his crazy dyed-black hair.

Two ragged, hard slices are all it takes to cut the tendons. There's another harsh, hoarse sound of pain that barely even sounds human (but Quinn knows all about human sounds of pain. He's made most of them; he knows how different they are to animal cries.) and he frisks the dude for good measure.

There are a _lot_ of weapons.

He's just thrown the last of them over his shoulder when there's a _thud_, and he turns around.

Ah, Mikey has finally hit the deck.

There's a _caw_, and something black and gross-looking hops along towards the felled assassin.

"Fuck off," Quinn tells the crow.

He gets up. There's blood on his jeans. This is not exactly _new_; they're already more brown than anything else, strata of bloodstains on bloodstains, fresh on old, a patchwork of other people's pain and his own.

Mikey's on his back, his hands making only the most cursory of compresses on his heaving belly, and there's blood at his lips, his eyes wide and weird, his breaths ripped and ragged.

Quinn stands over him and counts to ten, slowly. It's probably too late. He counts back down from ten, watching Mikey's legs jerk like a spider held too close to a flame. He gets into a crouch, even though it hurts his knees, his shoulders were Nate's bike chain bit them, and mutters, "It's all going to be okay."

He doesn't say who for.

And then, and only then, Quinn gets up straight, picks his battered and scraped, stained cell phone with all the numbers worn off the keypad, and calls down to Toro, to the hotel; _something has just gone really fucking wrong_.

* * *

The kitchen is so crowded that Quinn can only see glimpses, slices of what's happening around other people's backs and sides. Mikey Way lies flat on his back, naked to the hips, his skin almost grey under the weird kitchen lights, one hand dangling limp and loose over the edge of the brushed steel table, the other clasped between Gerard's hands so tightly that his wrist is turning purple.

There are no sounds but the hush of held breaths, the buzz of the lights, and the unhealthily quiet gurgles and groans of pain from the younger Way that probably aren't even conscious.

There's a bucket of disinfectant and a bucket of used swabs. The latter is really fucking full, and the disinfectant isn't covering the smell of blood, not from Quinn, the smell of blood and the smell of shit. There's a punctured intestine somewhere in that mess. There has to be.

Quinn's seen the doctor somewhere before; she's short and she has no eyebrows, her mouth behind the mask wide like a knife wound, and her hands are small but almost masculine. He can't see what she's doing, but the expression on the face of her lanky assistant isn't promising. He looks weird, too, and weirdly familiar, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration as he takes something from the doctor's hand and drops it into something else with a clang. Spent bullet, metal tray? It sounds that way.

Jepha jostles his arm. Quinn squints at him, but he can't answer the silent question etched into his bro's face. Not here.

"C'mon, Mikey," Gerard's voice is only a whisper, but in the expectant silence of the kitchen it echoes and increases like it's being transmitted over a PA system, every agonised twitch, every desperate urging in his words pin-sharp and audible to everyone.

The body in front of Quinn – Bryar – shuffles weight and he catches sight of Bert, directly behind Gerard, close enough to put his hand on the guy's shoulder. Looking as concerned as everyone else is _trying_ to look.

Blood is seeping into the soles of Quinn's sneakers. He can feel it even before he looks down; there's a lot of blood washing over the gritty, cheap grey floor of the kitchen. Too much blood for anyone to seriously hold out hope, but he can still hear the elder Way murmuring frantically "C'mon, Mikey," like a mantra.

Another shuffle of weight in front of him and now Quinn can see the wound again. It's like looking at someone already dead. Someone in a morgue; for five weeks one summer Quinn worked in a hospital morgue (before he got fired for corpse robbing, selling organs, and letting freaks in to fuck the bodies at $25 a pop; the management had been too shocked to consider pressing charges) and washed drying blood, shit, and vomit from bodies this colour. Their stillness was something he'd learnt to see creeping into junkies, into car crash victims, death's precursors hiding in the eyes of people who were on the verge of becoming meat.

The death rattle's more of a wheeze, but everyone hears it, and Quinn doubts there's a person in the fucking room who hasn't heard one before.

It's followed by a dry sob. He doesn't have to guess whose.

The doctor steps back from the table, her slick red hands raised in the traditional medical gesture of _this wasn't my fault_.

Quinn takes a moment to imagine what this development is going to mean for the man sitting in the back of a van with a camera trained on him, Andy Hurley two feet in front of him and a knife fitting into his palm like it's a part of his body; how long he's going to be kept alive and how much of that remaining life is going to make him wish that he was dead. Quinn's guessing _all_\--

He catches Bert's eye. Bert has his hand on Way's shoulder, and he's whispering something in his ear, something … comforting, Quinn guesses, or steadying, because Way nods slowly, his hands still clamped around Mikey's dead and brittle fingers.

Quinn breathes in through his nose and shuts his eyes.

When he opens them again Bert's still looking at him, still muttering into Way's ear. He knows what this means, like he knows who gets the dubious privilege of turning the guy in the van into sludge in a bath when Hurley's finally done with him; they're not leaving. The wrong Way got ended, and his plans for maybe _not_ being shut up in a hotel watching Bert's heart get trampled to a fine paste have just shattered like plate glass window.

He watches Bert's fingers flex over Gerard's shoulder and knows that this doesn't matter, because _Bert's_ plans just got a shot in the arm, and they're the ones that count. He's known since the day he dragged two assholes off a half-starved meth addict by a rain-filled dumpster that Bert's plans are the ones that he needs to listen to, Bert's and _no one else's_.

Quinn wipes the sole of his sneaker against the calf of his jeans, the back of his hand against the underside of his nose, and catches Travis looking at him. Oh. Yeah.

There are one or two other things he needs to deal with.


End file.
